Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Koeberle, Alexander L
• Pearsall, Webster
• Hammers, Brad E
• Mulhall, Daniel
• McKenna, James E
• Chalupnicki, Marc
• Sethi, Suresh A

Titel

Whole-lake acoustic telemetry to evaluate survival of stocked juvenile fish

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2023-11, Vol.13 (1), p.18956-18956, Article 18956

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Free E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Estimates of juvenile survival are critical for informing population dynamics and the ecology of fish, yet these demographic parameters are difficult to measure. Here, we demonstrate that advances in animal tracking technology provide opportunities to evaluate survival of juvenile tagged fish. We implemented a whole-lake telemetry array in conjunction with small acoustic tags (including tags < 1.0 g) to track the fate of stocked juvenile cisco (Coregonus artedi) as part of a native species restoration effort in the Finger Lakes region of New York, USA. We used time-to-event modeling to characterize the survival function of stocked fish, where we infer mortality as the cessation of tag detections. Survival estimates revealed distinct stages of juvenile cisco mortality including high immediate post-release mortality, followed by a period of elevated mortality during an acclimation period. By characterizing mortality over time, the whole-lake biotelemetry effort provided information useful for adapting stocking practices that may improve survival of stocked fish, and ultimately the success of the species reintroduction effort. The combination of acoustic technology and time-to-event modeling to inform fish survival may have wide applicability across waterbodies where receiver arrays can be deployed at scale and where basic assumptions about population closure can be satisfied.